


and i shall be dumped where the weed decays

by Legendaerie



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-DA2, Pre-DA:I, anti-mage sentiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"It must have been something terrible," they cry as they crowd around the storyteller, "to make Fenris leave him."  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>"War is terrible," he relates. "So is love. And there is nothing fair about either of them." </i>
</p><p>----  </p><p>In which Fenris dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i shall be dumped where the weed decays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ei8htbithero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ei8htbithero/gifts).



> This was a commission for my dear friend [Katie!](http://songofthestorms.tumblr.com/) She wanted a pre-DA:I "break his heart to save him" Fenhawke fic, and I gleefully consulted all my other friends who have actually played DA:I to get the events of the story right with as few spoilers as possible. 
> 
> So! This remains largely spoiler-free, for anyone like me who still games on a laptop and can't run the Fance Games yet. And if you'd like to consider commishing me, I've got a page with all the juicy deets right [here.](http://lostlegendaerie.tumblr.com/commission)

 

He feels as though he’s dreaming.

No, that’s not quite right. Fenris has had many dreams over the course of his life; some terrifying, some nonsensical, some so filled with longing that he wakes up in agony twofold, burning and melting like a wax candle that gutters in the morning light. Life with Hawke isn’t a dream. It’s as though he is standing on the edge of a cliff, and he is not afraid to fall because he knows he can fly. Exhilarating, impossible, and yet.

And yet the part of him that grows stronger with each disappointment, that coils through his chest like an echo of his lyrium scars, reminds him that no good thing ever really lasts.

Like the slow process of waking on the coarse but welcome bed of the inn, where he shuffles deeper under the shared blanket and closer to Hawke’s broad back. The human man radiates warmth when he sleeps, and it only adds to Fenris’ laughing jibes that they’re feverishly sick.

“Love is the best kind of sickness,” is what Hawke always says, before kissing him with the kind of careless kindness that makes Fenris smother his chuckle in a disapproving snort. Except this morning, when his lover is too deep in dreams to hear him. And so Fenris smiles as he hides himself in the shadow of Hawke’s body, only the crown of his snow-white hair visible above the covers, and goes back to sleep.

When he wakes again, Hawke is already up and dressed, staring out the window of their lodgings with a partial loaf of bread and two mugs of ale on the table in front of him. His staff leans against Fenris’ sword within easy reach of the bed, deceptively fragile with the power Fenris knows it can channel. 

Hawke is much more pleasant to study, early morning gold gilding the edge of his turned face, the curve of his bicep, the spread of his fingers on the table’s surface, catching like a sudden flame on the ring of his other hand as he rests his chin in his palm. Not for the first time, Fenris feels a surge of sentiment as fragile as glass, as needy as hunger, and he conceals his face once more under the blanket with a huff.

“I know you’re awake,” and Hawke’s voice is amused, with none of the just-woken hoarseness Fenris finds so appealing. He must have been up for a while, then.

“Have you considered that I may not want to be awake?” he replies, with all the force and weight of a carelessly chucked pebble behind his remark. Hawke laughs, low and easy.

“When have you ever wanted to be awake?”

Having no proper reply for that one, Fenris sits up, blankets falling away to leave him bare in the slight chill of the room. His clothes are a pile of leather on the other side of the room, thrown there during certain activities the night prior, and he busies himself with untangling all the laces and straps and flaps into something coherent and wearable.

“Has your bird arrived yet?” Fenris starts, referring to the trained falcon Varric uses to relay messages to Hawke as they travel across the Free Marches. Unsurprisingly, the dwarf had presented the bird with a joke (“I got you a messenger, Hawke.”) and thus Fenris carefully avoids addressing the bird by its species.

Hawke (who had thoroughly enjoyed the joke and still uses it from time to time) turns away from the window. “Not yet. I hope it can find us in town.”

The small metal kite-shaped shield with the Hawke family crest leans in the window, facing the sky. Varric’s bird has been trained to find the insignia, and so far been able to reach them no matter where they’ve camped.  Fenris wonders if Hawke isn’t trying to replace the Mabari he left with Aveline in Kirkwall with the falcon. It’s very Hawke to empathize with animals. 

“I’m sure it will.”

He’s used to his armor enough that he can avoid the leather edges from catching on his lyrium veins. The process still takes him a few minutes, however, during which he can feel the weight of Hawke’s eyes on him. Unlike the mercenary gaze of so many others, he welcomes the subtle attention and flexes his hands in his gloves until the leather settles into a welcome weight against his skin.

“I do love watching you dress,” Hawke confesses from the table.

Fenris throws him the barest flicker of a coy look over his shoulder. “I hope you don't enjoy it too much. I'm not taking this off again until tonight.”

The man at the table manages a hurt little huff that is so uncannily like his Mabari that Fenris has to bite back a laugh, chest swelling with the intoxicating blend of amusement, trust, affection and just a hint of lust that he's come to associate with Hawke.  Even though it's been several years since they first met, his feelings have not waned. Instead, they've only strengthened with time and familiarity, settling into his bone with the same feeling of belonging as his armor. 

Before he buckles the chestpiece into place, however, Fenris joins Hawke on the other side of their breakfast table, taking the small knife and cutting off a slice of bread. He takes a careful whiff of the ale, decides he’s smelled worse, and washes down the first dry bite with the slightly acrid brew. 

Fenris spots the falcon first, and tracks the fleck in the rose-tinted sky as it circles then swoops, fanning into a discernable shape. Hawke finally turns at the sound of flapping wings, and as the bird lands it is rewarded with gentle chin-scratches and a chunk of dried meat. The parchment strapped to the back of the bird seems denser than usual, and Fenris could swear the sleek barred feathers ruffle with relief when Hawke removes the bundle. But he can’t resist stroking a gentle finger along the side of the bird’s neck as Hawke reads, offering the crust of his breakfast to their guest.

If it is a dream, Fenris would rather never wake again.

* * *

It’s been around a year since they left Kirkwall to wander west across the Free Marches - Isabela called it a honeymoon, but Fenris suggests she’s only teasing them because she wasn’t invited along - and Hawke is getting restless. Of course they’ve had their share of bears, giant spiders, and roadside bandits but there hasn’t been anything large and especially threatening for a long time. Which is probably why the letters started in the first place, and why Hawke seems increasingly impatient for them to arrive.

Fenris is firmly of the belief that there is always going to be some crisis in some corner of the world, and is also rather selfishly glad they’re not currently in that corner. He is enjoying this foreign freedom, even if he’s constantly fighting the fear that it won’t be long before he’s on his own again, one way or another.

Three days after Varric’s falcon joins them for breakfast at the inn, Fenris and Hawke are back out in the countryside, following a bounty set on a reportedly massive nest of spiders along a well-traveled path into the Vimmark Mountains. Hawke leads the way, using his staff as a walking stick, and Fenris can see the tight set in his shoulders that implies he’s taken on yet another burden. The hunch is familiar, an echo of his own tendency to slouch, and not for the first time Fenris wonders what is weighing him down.

Movement further down the path distracts him; Fenris flexes the tendons in his hands as Hawke adjusts his grip on his staff. A soft rustle of boneless feet over stone confirms his suspicions on the spider nest, and when the first drops from a cliff overhanging the path, Fenris is ready and impales the beast on his sword. 

The spider screeches, venomous fangs clicking mere inches from his face and hairy legs beating at his side; Fenris crouches and shoves the sword up and away from him. His blade comes free, slicked with black fluid, and the spider lands on its back only to be ignited with the sweet-sulfur scent of mana. 

The scent of magic will always send a prickle of dread down his spine, but Fenris trusts Hawke not to hit him; just like Hawke trusts Fenris to draw the worst of the attack. And so he lights up his body with the power in his lyrium veins, sparking with blue light like lightning made flesh, and hacks half the legs off the next spider in a vicious sweep. Their soft bodies melt under the force of his swings, gore falling around his feet like rain, and Fenris allows himself a small smile of satisfaction. This is what he was made to do; and while he is no one’s golem, no one’s slave, it still feels a relief to excel at a task.

He feels it first; something akin to reverberation, like slamming his sword into stone. A ripple, a shockwave, a disruption erupting along his skin; distracted, Fenris is overwhelmed by the giant spider, pinned to the ground as its brethren squall and chatter with arachnid glee. He hears Hawke’s shout, just barely brings a knee up to protect those pregnant fangs from reaching his throat, and wrestles one arm free. It’s easy to brace his fingers like claws, light them up with lyrium and slip them through the spider’s thorax like a hot knife through butter.

But something goes wrong. His connection to the Fade falters, stumbles; and he is shocked back fully into this world with a flash of magic so powerful it drives the breath out of him. Which means that, when his arms burns and his flesh fuses with the spider, there isn’t air enough in his lungs to scream.

Fenris braces his feet against the abdomen of the giant spider, kicking it off him as he hauled back on his trapped arm; he comes free with the sickening, wet snap of tearing skin and tendons. Blood gushes out of his wrist, but his limb is at least intact, and Fenris grips the hilt of his sword with both hands. Red and black alike coat his arms as he hacks his way out of the pile of spiders, grip slipping on the sword and making his swings weaker than usual.

Yet he trusts Hawke to watch his back, to keep him alive as he again dives into the thick of their enemies, knowing that even in his state he can handle more close-range attacks than his lover. It is his purpose, his skill, and he will not falter.

At last, he cleaves through the last of the spiders, the follow-through of his blow almost knocking him off balance. Fenris shakes his head, dazed, as Hawke comes jogging up.

“You’re hurt,” the mage starts.

“A common side effect of battle,” Fenris can’t help but fire back, even as he buries the tip of his sword in the stone-riddled earth and tries to lean on it. He has lost a lot of blood. “I’ll be alright.”

He doesn’t jerk back when Hawke begins to heal the injury in a swirl of blue light; it is a necessary evil, so to speak, and worth it for the way it immediately clears his mind again. “What happened?” Hawke asks, tucking his staff in the crook of his arm to inspect the still-healing tangle of torn flesh. 

“Something happened with my lyrium abilities. It was as if my connection to the Fade was… disrupted.” As Fenris speaks, Hawke’s fingers curl slow and easy in the air above Fenris’ arm, like a musician playing an instrument. “My arm became stuck in the spider’s body.”

“Sounds like quite the bonding experience,” Hawke chirps as the last bit of torn flesh fades into smooth skin. Fenris gives him a dry look.

“One could say we became rather attached to each other, yes.”

For that, he receives a broad grin from a face still spattered with arachnid insides; the desire to kiss him senseless anyway he has to turn away. One of them must maintain some level of sense.

Fenris replaces his sword in its typical sling over his shoulder and starts to sift through the bodies. They’ll take the fangs back as proof of their bounty, and he pulls out a short dagger to sever them neatly from the spider’s heads, mindful of their venom. As he works, however, Fenris reflects on his mishap, and judging by Hawke’s silence, his lover does as well.

On the walk back down to the village, he activates his lyrium powers twice, in short bursts that never-the-less make him grit his teeth in pain. Both times, the familiar sheen of blue light breaks across his skin, crackling with power and just as they’ve always been. He would be tempted to shrug it off as nothing, but by nature he is suspicious of change. And being fused from the forearm down with a massive, furious spider had not been nothing.

“You know, you might have said something.”

“What?” Fenris asks, caught deep in thought; releasing his connection to the Fade, the blue light sizzles and fades along his fingertips.

“I said,” Hawke repeats, adjusting the way the bag of fangs sits over his shoulders, dark fluid seeping through the bottom of the sack, “you could have let me know you were injured.”

“Yes, I suppose I could have asked those spiders to wait until you could cut me out of their brother.” Fenris replies drly. Hawke doesn’t laugh. He can’t read Hawke’s face from behind him and doesn’t want to jog to keep up, so Fenris continues in a more somber tone.    
“We had a job to do, Hawke. I was only doing my part.”

Silence is his only answer. Fenris glances down the side of the mountain path just to look elsewhere than Hawke’s stiff back. The very ground seems hostile towards them, rolling, tree-freckled hills with stones that jut up at intervals like molars of the earth. A drop of venom drips out of Hawke's sack and nearly splatters onto his bare toes.

“There's talk of war in the south,” Hawke starts, with the lightness of tone Fenris would expect to hear used to discuss the weather. Yet he can pick out the underlying concern in those words, the gravity Hawke tries to conceal with levity.

So Fenris matches his tone, not looking up from the rocky landscape. “Is there?”

“Pity the world never stays saved for long, isn't it? Varric's been keeping me informed. Looks like they might end up needing me.”

That makes Fenris stop in his tracks. Hawke advances several more steps before he stops and turns, his expression carefully neutral. Several questions all spring to the front of his mind; Fenris lets them flood his closed mouth, heavy on his tongue, before he swallows all but one. 

“ _ They _ ?”

Hawke shifts the bag of spider fangs on his shoulder uneasily. The smile he passes Fenris makes his stomach twist, but neither look away.

“It seems things didn't end with Kirkwall.” Hawke turns to face the sky, the slight tilt of his lips taking on a bittersweet tightness.  “There's a civil war on the way.”

He doesn't have to ask between which parties; he was there, cutting down Templars beside a Dalish blood mage and a glorified abomination. Fenris knows who is involved.

“You intend to aid the mages.” Exhaustion strips his voice flat of inflection; Fenris feels the inevitability in his own words, in Hawke's silence.  This wild, open land reminds him little of Danarius' estate in Tevinter, and yet the memories are still fresh. If he closes his eyes, he can see the sunlight glinting off metal and polished stone, smell the blossoms in the garden that could never entirely mask the scent of blood, feel the lyrium burning its way through his body the first time. Memories that bring up a fresh wave of fear and resentment like an endless spring and drown him with the horror that the Free Marches are not Tevinter yet. 

It breaks a part of him, the part that howled to kill his sister when he learned of her betrayal, but he loves Hawke. And so the only thing further that Fenris asks is, “Where shall we go first?”

His sharp ears catch Hawke's small, sharp inhale, eyes widening as he turns. “You would fight for us?” he asks; as if he is surprised, despite everything else Fenris has done at his side. Despite all the blood already staining both of their hands.

“I would fight for you,” Fenris replies. “To whatever end,” he adds, lowering his gaze and walking forward once more. He hates Tevinter's farce of a Circle, hates the idea of slaughtering those who aim to protect the ordinary and the unfortunate from monsters in the skins of men. And yet he, too, is a monster in his own right. Whatever kind of life he has left to live with the curse of lyrium coursing through him, he wants it to be with the man who believes he could be more.

He passes Hawke on the path, stepping around the puddled venom at his feet, and soldiers onward.

“I don’t need you to die for me, Fenris,” Hawke says at last, faint behind him as he finally moves to catch up. Fenris grits his teeth, fighting down the urge to clarify -  _ Which of us has thrown himself into more dangerous situations? Who has shown more blind trust in volatile forces? One of us has to know your limits, Hawke, and I am not made of glass  _ \- or bicker. But he forces those feelings down, buries them deep under his skin to rot, and once more that suspicious voice reminds him that happiness is fleeting. 

 

* * *

They're almost to the coast, on the edge of the Planascene Forest, when it happens.

A pack of bandits who Hawke couldn't talk down swarm them both like flies on a carcass, and Fenris can tell they're not getting out unscathed. He's already bleeding badly from a deep graze at his hip but he's reluctant to use his lyrium abilities again after what happened with the spider. Without it, he's still a skilled swordsman, faster than the rabble around them, and Fenris can hold his own.

But he can't defend Hawke like this. For easily the third time since the start of battle, one that's taking long enough that his arms are starting to ache, he's cut off from the mage's side. Fenris buries his blade in a man's shoulder with a downward chop - an assassin drives a dagger into the meat of his neck, narrowly missing arteries and spine alike - Fenris leaves the first to nurse what's left of his arm and blocks a reaver's axe. And above it all, he hears the shout of Hawke in pain.

At last, he lets the lyrium burn through his body, lets it light him up like the sky in a thunderstorm. This time, when the assassin tries to strike, Fenris feints to the side and drives her onto the sword of her kin and leaves her to die, skewered, as he slips to Hawke's flank. His longsword moves with supernatural speed, the world greenish-tinted and blurred at the edges as he sees the echoes of their opponent's intent before they even move, and Fenris moves accordingly. The tide of battle begins to turn, and then--

And then pain hits him, bone deep and blinding; a pain to mirror the lyrium branding process, a pain that drives him to his knees in the Fade. Gone are all their enemies, gone is Hawke himself. There is nothing around but a rippling, eerie landscape haunted by phantoms. The worst has happened, and he can barely breathe.

One of them approaches him, pale and childlike and terrifying, with a waxy face like a drowned corpse, too many arms, and eyes glowing rose-gold. Its mouth moves as though it could be speaking, but he hears nothing. Fenris is frozen to the spot, unable to so much as move as cold, cold fingers caress the edge of his jaw like a lover, numbing the pain.

_ I am Devotion. Shall I aid you and your lover? _ it asks again, voice a chorus of all those he had ever cared for, a cacophony of disarming sweetness.  

And a voice not his own answers it with  _ Yes _ .

Fenris hits the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his body, coughing up a startled mouthful of blood and trying, vainly, to gasp air into his lungs. He dropped his sword sometime in all the confusion, and as he struggles onto his hands and knees he sees the female reaver ready her maul to crush his skull. And then her eyes flash rose-gold and she spins with uncanny, terrifying grace, and shatters the hip and thigh of her nearest companion.

A sickening pit opens up in his stomach, wide enough he wants to drown himself in it. That was blood magic - demonic possession - and he didn't want that, would rather die before he used the dark arts that led his kin like livestock to the slaughter. He coughs and his breath rattles wetly in the inhale, and he sees that the lyrium veins on his arms have split open. His own blood glitters with flecks of glowing cyan and purple, like an evening sky, and he crumples forward to rest his forehead against the dirt.

Perhaps he blacks out, perhaps he dreams, but eventually the sounds of battle slip away and he has the strength to sit up. His lyrium veins have healed over, and the sweet-sulfur scent of magic is sticking to the roof of his mouth as though he's been healed while he was out. 

The female reaver walks past him, raising her painfully broken arm to ruffle his hair; his gaze follows her to where she stands before an exhausted Hawke. She leans down and they share a kiss, brief but passionate, and then she stands and draws a dagger across her throat. The reaver crumples to the ground, a hot spray of blood spattering Hawke's robes, and as Fenris watches he wipes a small smear of red off his mouth.

When a wisp of wine-hued magic rises from the reaver's body to swirl around Hawke's fingers and finally vanish into his palm, Fenris cannot ignore the evidence. The relief that he didn't summon the spirit is a mere afterthought in the looming, frigid shadow of Hawke's betrayal. “That was blood magic,” he states, his words grating the raw inside of his throat and sticking to his tongue.

“You have a strange way of saying thank you,” Hawke replies, frivolous as usual. And Fenris has never really minded before - he tends to shy away from vulnerable confessions, and never doubted the sentiments behind Hawke's teasing words. But here they make him feel sick.

“I didn't need  _ that  _ kind of help,” Fenris spits with the last thick mix of saliva and blood. Hawke steps over the reaver's body and offers the elf a hand. Fenris ignores it and levers himself up with his sword, still hot with temper.

“Yes you did,” Hawke continues. “You ended up in the Fade - if I hadn't pulled you out, you could have been an abomination.”

“And instead you turned someone else into one.” Fenris gestures towards the fallen reaver, her features still holding onto the edges of a dreamy smile. “Though I suppose you believe the ends justify the means, like usual.”

His accusations aren't entirely fair, but he's not thinking clearly; too blinded by fear and anger to reign in his tongue. He thought he knew Hawke, body and soul, thought they had both seen the deepest, darkest shadows of each other’s souls. But nothing could prepare him for blood magic. 

Before Hawke can reply, however, he sees Hawke's body go rigid with shock; still sore, still furious, Fenris turns and follows his gaze south. And there, in the blurred distance, through the trees glows a distant blur of green light. An unholy light, one even from here he can tell is tied to magic. The lyrium in his body seems to crawl under his skin, and for a moment Fenris is back in Tevinter, wondering who next of Danarius' staff will be brought forward to be butchered to sate his appetite for power.

If there was a Maker, no wonder he didn't speak to his people anymore if this is what they could do.

“Go home, Fenris,” Hawke says softly from somewhere behind Fenris; the voice brings him back to the present, back to the Free Marches, but it feels like a dream. There is ice in Hawke's tone, and Fenris turns to stare him down.

“Go... home? What home, Hawke? What are you talking about?” Hawke takes a step forward; Fenris, a step back, his body recoiling by instinct as his mind still tries to wake up. 

But Hawke simply passes him on the path. “Kirkwall. Tevinter, even. I have no longer need of your company.”

Fenris watches him pick up one of their two simple packs - including his shield - and walk away. He feels lightheaded, still surrounded by the scent of blood and death, and his voice is weak to his own ears.

“You're still going to aid the mages?”

Hawke is silent. Fury is bubbling up in the pit of Fenris' stomach, slowly inching its way through his frozen body, and Hawke is a few dozen paces away by the time the anger hits his chest and spurs him to move. He has to race to catch up but then it's easy to block the way in front of Hawke with his sword, even if the blade trembles in his grip.

“Answer me!” Fenris barks, and at last Hawke turns to face him; and in all their years together, he does not recognize the man who smiles thinly back at him.

“Goodbye, Fenris. Do not follow me.”

Hawke raises his hand and Fenris feels his pulse stutter. He drops the sword, his hands flying to his throat by instinct even though he knows it will do nothing. It's been years since he felt the invasive heat of blood magic, and he gags as Hawke cuts off the blood to his head without even laying a hand on him. Darkness swims at the edge of his vision, but he won't go down that easily.

Half-blind in rage, Fenris forces his lyrium to activate and steps forward, closing the distance between them with intent to kill. If this is Hawke, then he never truly knew him and never loved him. If this isn't Hawke, he cannot let an abomination walk free. Not after that monster Anders blew up the Chantry.

But by the time his hand touches Hawke's chest, his eyes are blurring with tears and his connection to the fade is severed. Fenris falls to his knees in front of Hawke, clinging to the mage's robes and consciousness both with the tips of his fingers. Yet even he cannot hold on forever, and at last he hits the ground, falling back into merciful unconsciousness.

* * *

He awakens to the feel of rain.

Slowly, like the water pattering on the leaves above him, Fenris comes back to his senses. First, touch; the soreness of his body from the fight, the slickness of water soaking his hair and rolling down his leather armor. Next is sight, with a dense low ceiling of greenery and a snarl of branches blocking out the dark evening sky. Then scent, and the lingering traces of blood slowly being smothered by the mud and the rain. And last of all, the taste of sleep in his mouth.

The bush he is under is too low for him to sit up, so Fenris stays on his side, trying to take stock of his surroundings. In the gloom and the low mist of the gentle rain, he thinks he can make out the path he and Hawke had fought on - and just that easily, his breath catches in his throat with memory.

He will not cry; he will not rage to the unfeeling, rain-shrouded sky above like a wounded wolf. He tells himself he has endured worse. He had to have. Even if he can’t remember it right now. He will force himself to rise, to pack the rest of their things, to walk, to live. 

But the rain has stopped by the time Fenris crawls out from under the sheltering shrub, his eyes red-rimmed and body splotched with mud. For a while, he stands on the path that has been washed clean of blood and tracks alike, and stares southward. The faint green light shines like a beacon of ill-omen, a sickly distant star, and he knows where Hawke is going. 

Fenris shoulders the bag and his sword, points his nose north, and begins to walk.

For his own sake, he doesn't backtrack. He abandons the path entirely, walking unflinchingly over sticks and acorns and small stones littering the forest floor, the woodlands hushed around him until the only sound is the rustle of his belongings and his own breathing. Yet he feels no kinship with the land like Merrill does, feels no invisible bond tethering himself to the earth and all its myriad living things. He was born in a land of blood and iron, of hubris and gold, and the silence only makes it easier to still hear Hawke's voice.

Fenris wipes the heel of his palm across his cheek, smearing rain and mud across his skin, and grits his teeth. Hawke does not want him anymore. Hawke does not need him anymore. The dream is over and now he must keep moving.

His body shakes at the edges from the lingering chill of rain as the sun sets behind the mountains, leaving a vault of thin grey clouds and a three-quarter moon in its wake. Eventually, the world begins to stir around Fenris once more; the conversations of crickets and tree frogs, the flutter of a few adventurous birds, and the susurration of the wind through the leaves. And then, sometime near midnight, the faint sound of human conversation.

He almost doesn't hear it over the sounds of the voices in his own head. Automatically, his body continues forward on the path, numb to the danger until he comes across a different, broader path than the one he shared with Hawke. And even then, it takes his foggy mind a moment to process the scene.

“Well isn't this a lucky day for us, eh boys?” A human woman with twin knives at her hips raises a hand to halt a small caravan. Fenris stops at the top of the slight hill, the grass there long and lush enough to caress his calves, and he blinks in a daze. Several similarly arms humans stand on the path, forming a semi-circle around a trio of female elves and women in ropes.

“Looks like we got a volunteer,” states another one of the armed humans as he unshoulders his longbow. “And he's a pretty one, too.”

Fenris catches the dead eyes of one of the women in the center, and by the time his pack hits the ground his whole body has lit up not with lyrium, but with rage. 

Hate is easy. Murder is easy. Falling back into old habits feels like coming home, the stench of gore nearly welcome. His sword sings in his hands as he charges down the hill, teeth bared as a scream of pure, white-hot hatred burns his throat and sears the air. The archer doesn't even have time to nock an arrow on his bowstring before Fenris leaps, bringing the blade down with such force that the man's body is rendered nearly in two.

“Oh, shit,” yelps the woman who had spoken before, and Fenris focuses his fury on her, losing himself in the heat of battle. Blood and sweat alike blurs the edges of his vision, their miasma filling his nose as they soak into his skin with every hack and slash. Time loses meaning, like it did in the rain under the shrub, like it did in bed with Hawke, and when finally there is no one left for him to fight, Fenris wipes his hand across his face.

The women are gone, and he has to check the bodies to make sure he didn't slay them by accident in his fever. But here is a pile of shorn ropes that says one of them still had fight left in her, and the only bodies in the road are that of the slavers. Fenris rests the tip of his sword in the ground, his body still shaking with adrenaline and emotion, every nerve ringing like a bell, and he forces himself to breathe.

His chest catches, and Fenris presses his fingers against his ribs and feels a shallow stab wound. He didn't even feel it at the time, but now as the rush of battle ebbs away, it aches and bleeds, sticky against his fingers. He limps back to his pack, rummages through it for bandages and finds a few lengths of linen soaked in elfroot juices, plus some deer sinew and a needle. Threading the needle, he steels himself, pushes the torn leather to the side, and pierces his skin. It hurts worse than the initial wound did, but he manages a few shaking stitches before his nerves give out. He tears off a patch and presses it messily against the wound, feeling blood soak through his fingers; and then, as clear as day, he hears Hawke's voice.

“You're going to do more damage to yourself than they did. Here, let me.”

And he almost looks up and sees Hawke kneeling before him, that achingly familiar twist to his lips of a teasing smile before he remembers that Hawke has gone south and Fenris north. That Hawke didn't want him anymore.

Fenris curls forward, pressing his forehead against the side of the pack, arm still wrapped around his ribs like half of a hug, and cries. Just a couple miserable, childish tears that escape without his permission, a broken sob that makes his shoulders shake and the saturated linen under his hand ooze further.

He really is alone, for the first time since he can remember. There is no one chasing him, no one beside him. It is only him on this blood-stained path, a jagged line from northwest to due south. He always assumed he’d be relieved for such a day to come; that it would taste like freedom. 

But it doesn’t. And he wishes only to sink back into a dreamless sleep and not wake again.

 

* * *

Weeks rolls into months, and like any injury the ache Hawke left behind fades. Fenris remasters his lyrium abilities and slowly, inevitably, he works his way along the coast. Slavers learn to fear his name, the elf who hunted them with all the savagery and determination of a wolf. For while he loved Hawke - loves - loved him so much he nearly forgot his hate of magic and slavers, his hate never forgot him. 

Yet he still wears Hawke’s emblem at his hip, even after all this time. It feels as much of a part of him as his lyrium veins, and his occasional companions - hired hands, recently freed slaves, reformed raiders - know better than to ask. For a long time, the memory did nothing but sear and fester, and countless times he held it in his hand, ready to crush it in his grip. Yes, the sight of the emblem on the shield still hurt occasionally, but it was more than Hawke’s memory. It was a memento of his years in Kirkwall, of rebuilding after his past had been taken from him once before; and even painful memories deserve to be kept.

At present the little wooden shield sits on the table beside him as Fenris takes advantage of the sunshine to study maps above deck. He has little interest in cartography, but his contacts say they are closing in on one of the larger slaver rings on the continent, and he must plan a course.

“Thirsty?” asks a female voice from behind him; Fenris looks up and sees the plain face of an elf with short, flame-red hair. More interesting to him is the flask she is currently sipping from, a distinctly sharp fermented reek emanating from it.

“Keep your swill away from my maps, Shianni,” he warns her, with not nearly enough ice in his tone. She shrugs and takes another sip, capping the flask with exaggerated care.

"Begging your pardon, sir," she replies in good humor. Then her eyes flicker skyward and her hand snaps to her bow. A gust of wind and the flutter of wings, and then like a bolt from the blue a hawk lands on his map, talons piercing a constellation around Lake Calahad.

Fenris mutters a startled curse under his breath, then realizes the bird looks familiar. There’s a scroll attached to its back, the case splattered with dirt and sea spray.

“Looks like he’s come a long way,” Shianni remarks, reaching out a hand carefully. The hawk submits to her touch, ruffling his feathers with Fenris undoes the scroll. The handwriting is familiar, if messy, but Fenris still has to read very slowly the message Varric has sent him.

He reads in silence, the rest of the world bleeding away as he pours over the emotional scrawl. When he is finished, he rolls up the scroll in silence and stares across the ocean. He will not cry Hawke’s name, even now; not in pain, in misery, in pride. Instead he simply scratches the bird under the beak, closes his eyes and feels the sunlight on his lyrium-scarred skin.

“You all right?” Shianni asks. He keeps his eyes closed, his jaw clenched tight.

“I think I’ll take a drink,” is all he says. “And some parchment. I need…”

He looks to the sky, where a few distant clouds blur into the blue, and then south to where the omnipresent, unnatural green star has finally faded.

“I need to write a letter.”

  
  



End file.
